Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Summer 2013 came to an end, and since the purpose of this blog is basically to have a personal diary everyone can read (but nobody does), it's a good time for a nice, useless recap of the " geek activities" and achievements made so far.

Gaming

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 I really had a blast with this game... well, quite so. Unlocking all the characters (well, almost), a decent number of stages and MS Licenses had been quite fun. I must admit that the story-line didn't compelled me very much to go on, and I still have to get the "true" ending. With Warriors Orochi 3 always looming in the back, DW:G3 provided a good diversion, but not much more than that.

Scarlet Blade The embodiment of eye-candy and fanservice in one single MMORPG, this game also was just a temporary experience. It was also good for testing my PC performance with a current generation MMORPG. Unfortunately, the servers constantly disconnecting me and the need to input all the log-in info again every time has been a significant deterrent. Maybe I'll get back to it one day - or maybe I'll just uninstall it when I'll find a more interesting client-based MMORPG to play.

Warriors Orochi 3 When it comes down to button-mashing, nothing beats the ultimate crossover game from Tecmo Koei. The nicest part of this summer playthrough, it's that I finally got the Trophy for gathering 100 crystals - which means that I'll be finally able to spam those Triple Musou Attacks at my heart's content instead of waiting to have as much generals as possible on the screen.

Adventure Quest My favorite on-line game of all time has been my primary source of gaming entertainment. There hasn't been many events going on that interested me, but those few have been quite satisfying. Moreover, I had time to do some serious grinding (as I wrote in the previous posts) to finally get Atreides above level 100. Now that summer is over, I'll go back to the game only when interesting events will appear.

AnimeJojo: Bizarre Adventures I enjoyed this anime so much, that I couldn't help to write down a review about it. JJBA is one of my favorite manga, and both Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency truly deserved such an awesome adaptation.

Detroit Metal City I read about this anime last summer on Japanator, and since then I've been curious to watch it. Finally, I decided myself to do that and I didn't regret it any bit. DMC it's funny, vulgar and uncompromising - something I would recommend to anyone who doesn't mind watching something... different.

Attack On Titan When a certain anime, movie or video-game is literally everywhere, you eventually give it a try out of curiosity, right ? I absolutely wanted to see why everyone was talking about AoT, and I got the answer after watching the first episode. Attack On Titan is a cruel, desperate tale of survival. If you can "handle" its crudeness and tone, you will experience one of the deepest, engaging anime of all time.

WebTwitter Last Summer has been very intense for me on the Twitterverse: it was something relatively new for me. This time around I have been a little less active, but I managed to meet new interesting people and RPers anyway.

Google+ No matter what people say, Google+ has been a pleasant surprise for me. It gave me the chance to spread my nonsense in a different social forum, and helped me to get new people to interact with. I purposely decided to focus on the Otaku community because it's very active and welcoming.Memes Discovering imgflip.com and how it was easy to make a meme has been a revelation for me: for a couple of days, it's been like a drug. Eventually I exhausted all the ideas I could came up with, so I think that now humanity is safe from my "peculiar sense of humor" for a bit.

Fanfic Eventually, I fell too to the lure of writing a fanfic of my own. The result is "Pink To The Future", a story which features K-On characters in a crazy, alternate future. You might think it's funny, but it's not.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Ah, summer !! The perfect time for relaxing on a beach as you enjoy the weather and survive the heat, going to swim now and then. That's how most people (quite possibly the wisest ones) love to spend this time of the year, but to me the warm days of summer always meant a very different thing: massive grinding.

These days are simply too hot to start over a new game and enjoy it properly, and this time around I honestly want to get my Adventure Quest character to the highest levels (100+) before summer ends.

In one of my previous AQ rantings I stated that I would never use the untrainer to remove my END points and spend them in other stats - but I never said anything about untraining my DEX, right ? In fact, I did untrain all my 50 points and spent them in LUC, which resulted in a very good move. This idea came after I read many suggestions and conversations between players in Ubear's AQ site chat.

Since I'm just a regular Adventurer I won't be able to get Plasma Dragons or other better monsters for my grinding needs, so my attention is all for Drakonnan's strongest general: Broilspoil.

Broilspoil "The Brollinator" is probably going to experience the worst summer of his entire career.

In my humble opinion, the "friendly" red dragon general will be the quickest way to achieve the AQ goals I've set for this summer. So, until a new event unfolds (in all honesty, I have no intention to participate in the Knight Training quests), Atreides will be busy in the Hall of Memories (that's how I justify the Broilspoil grinding in my mindfap storyline), defeating such powerful foe over and over as he gets stronger for the challenges ahead.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

We fought against any kind of monstrosities, from ancient dragons revived to rule the world to alien menaces threatening the whole galaxy - but the most punishing blow came from the most powerful being ever conceivable: Artix Entertainment itself.

Some players (read "me") doubted about the true usefulness of the Endurance (END) stat. To clear that doubt from us (read "me" again), the developers decided to make said stat even less useful than before - and that after I claimed defiantly that I would keep going with my 150 END and avoid the "untrain" trick, no matter the cost (read my previous AQ ranting post on this very blog for further details).

So what now ? Quests are simply going to be harder, more frustrating than ever. One might simply observe that all I have to do is to untrain END and distribute those points to different stats instead, but I want to offer a provoking thought: why not making the Endurance stat a useful one instead ?

Monday, June 3, 2013

This was a period of my life where job would take priority over other activities.The late spring/early summer season always led to a call from a certain company for employment, but the crisis hit so hard that even they are in bad business.

Being lucky enough that I don't actually need a job (for the moment) to make a living, I have no better choice than look at the bright side of things. I will at least be able to indulge a little more in my hobbies (you just have to read the side-bars to see what I'm talking about) and, yes, more to time to share, post and do the very same stuff I did until now on the internet.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

In my early steps back on February 2012, I started The Crawler's account (aka @Crawler3333) as a "regular" RP account. Seeing that there were more Nightcrawlers out there (as expected), I decided to made some sort of "alternate" Nightcrawler, taking the funniest aspects of the well-known blue mutant teleporter. Seeing my lack of motivation and skill in making it a "true" RP account (especially when compared with some very serious, committed and amazing writers) I soon gave it the label of OOC ("Out Of Character") in my account bio.

Then something else happened, something called Adventure Quest and Adventure Quest Worlds. Both of them are RPG games, and RPG games are (with some noticeable exceptions) by definition some of the most time-consuming video-games ever.

Unable to drop off entirely The Crawler (thanks to which I was able to meet a considerable number of amazing people), I decided to drop most of the "role-playish" side on @Crawler3333 and turned it in an "RP-RL" account. For those who follow me for a long time, the change will be subtle and almost unnoticeable, but some of my followers (both old and new) might feel somehow "betrayed" by this choice. If you are among them, I guess I will have to beg your pardon and suggest you to search some good "true" Nightcrawler RPer.

For better or worse, some followers (which I eventually followed back in turn) decided that The Crawler had its own right to be in that awkward reality I call the "Twitterverse" - and these are the ones I feel more obliged to. So yes, you'll have to bear with an alternate Nightcrawler which likes to "play Batman" in Metro City from Final Fight (I never said I would drop RP entirely, after all ;) ), listens heavy metal, watches anime, plays videogames and all - and when you see tweets in Italian you can easily assume that's the writer talking. Or you could just push the "Unfollow" button.

That's what The Crawler / @Crawler3333 is, after all. Love it, hate it... or just let it be.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

When the going gets tough.... the tough gets Missing

After months of furious battles I finally reached the so-called "mid-levels" and I had to witness some of the game limits - and more than anything else my precious character's build.

When I started playing AQ I underestimated this game difficulty, naively thinking that all I had to do was to equip the right stuff with the right enemy.

Now, I completed many of the game sagas (specific stories made up of several quests) and I had to skip some quests because certain bosses (and even regular battles !!) were too strong for my character. "What went wrong ?" I asked myself - and the I found the answer by looking in the dedicated forum: the build (i.e. the way you distribute your character's point in the various stats) I made for my character is very, very bad. Too much Endurance, and not enough precision Dexterity and Luck. In other words, the great Atreides is a hyper-tank which lacks the precision he needs to hit the most nimble enemies.

Sure, there is an in-game trick to reset to 0 one of your skills and distribute those point again, but it seems a little too convenient to me. So be it, then - what's done it's done. I will bear with the character's build as long as I'll be able to and make up for this grave mistake by distributing all the points to Luck for the next 12 levels (!?). I'll much probably miss my enemies A LOT, get frustrated at unearthly levels - but just as a Savatage song say "that's the price you pay when you come to play".

I'm afraid I'm going to see this a LOT :(

So take my heed, future heroes of Lore, and don't make the same mistake that Atreides did in his crazy quest for power. Don't train your stats carelessly thinking there will be no relevant consequences: read the instructions first.

Friday, February 1, 2013

What is the sense of writing something that much possibly no one will ever read ? That is a question I ask myself every time I post something on the web, from a review to a single tweet. When it comes down to a personal blog/website, this question becomes even more relevant.

And that's when the title of this post comes into play: a blog is (or CAN be) some kind of personal diary. Unlike a "regular" diary, anyway, a blog is written keeping in mind that there is a chance (and hope, I believe) that somebody is gonna read it. At least, that is somehow the use I make of it. In this particular case, this blog is made with the same intent I made every other entry in the strange world of Internet: sharing.

Whether is a song, an anime or a video-game, sharing is the very essence of this blog. Whenever I find something that amuses me, I'll be keeping track of it and include in the "Cool stuff of the moment" and the other side-bars. If somebody happens to read it, he might eventually consider to watch/listen/play my recommendations and (hopefully) enjoy them as I did. If nobody reads it, it's fine anyway: this blog would have served its purpose as a record of the things that made me passionate, entertained me - or simply helped me making through the day.

With that said, here is the very first list of things that I recently found entertaining and I'd like to share with all those who might read this thing:

Anime
Azumanga Daioh (Slice of life comedy)
Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou (Slice of life comedy)
Jojo no Kimiyona Boken: The Animated Series (Action)
Nichijou (Slice of life comedy)
Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas (Action)